Newsstand: September 3, 2013

Hope you all enjoyed the holiday yesterday! Now, back to work. In the news: one Toronto cop wants a change on dooring policy, the police chief requests information on recent shootings, anyone else who requests information from the mayor's office is allegedly not getting it, and Verizon is just not that into us, after all.

A Toronto cop who was “doored” while on duty thinks the city’s police should start tracking similar incidents between cyclists and cars. Jeff Taylor, a bike cop in 13 Division, was hit by a car door in June while on his bike and on duty. Despite the fact that he was wearing a bulletproof vest, which helped break his fall, he fractured his sternum. Taylor emailed the Toronto Police Services board last month to urge them to again begin tracking dooring incidents, writing “they are a very serious threat to all cyclists.” Toronto police stopped tracking dooring separately from other bike-car collisions in 2012 after the province redefined “collisions” as incidents involving vehicles in motion. Between 2007 and 2011, there were an average of 144 dooring incidents reported each year in Toronto.

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair is urging anyone with information on the recent shooting death of a teenage boy in Toronto to come forward. In an interview with Newstalk 1010 yesterday, Blair said that some of the boys may simply have been innocent victims caught in the crossfire between warring gang factions. The chief also urged anyone with information to come forward to police, saying it’s “almost impossible” to solve the crimes without community cooperation. So far there has only been one arrest in the shooting deaths of seven teenaged Toronto boys this year.

Putting in a freedom of information request to Mayor Rob Ford’s office? Apparently, you should be prepared to wait. A City spokesperson said on Friday that no records were received in June or July for requests made, and the first for August came in only on the last business day of that month. The Toronto Star said that three of the paper’s requests have missed their legislated 30-day deadline for a response.

Apparently Verizon doesn’t actually want to move into Canada after all. The company did consider entering the Canadian market by buying a smaller carrier like Wind or Mobilicity, then taking part in the January 2014 wireless auction, but decided on a different course last month. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam told Bloomberg News that the company’s interest in Canada was “way overblown.” Well, FINE THEN, Verizon. (Does this mean that the recent spate of better deals for wireless will end?)